Afternoons were the aid societies,
missionary societies, and all the rest of them, and then the endless
calls,--calls on the sick, calls on the healthy, calls on the pillars,
calls on the backsliders, calls on the very sad, calls on the very
happy,--every varying phase of life in a church community merits a call
from the minister and his wife.
The heavy yoke,--the yoke of dead routine,--dogs the footsteps of every
minister, and even more, of every minister's wife. But Carol thought
of the folks that fitted into the cogs of the routine to drive it round
and round,--the teachers, the doctors' wives, the free-thinkers, the
mothers, the professional women, the cynics, the pillars of the
church,--and thinking of the folks, she forgot the routine. And so to
her, routine could never prove a clog, stagnation. Every meeting
brought her a fresh revelation, they amused her, those people, they
puzzled her, sometimes they made her sad and frightened her, as they
taught her facts of life they had gleaned from wide experience and
often in bitter tears. Still, they were folks, and Carol had always
had a passion for people.
David worked too hard. It was positively wicked for any human being to
work as he did, and she scolded him roundly, and even went so far as to
shake him, and then kissed him a dozen times to prove how very angry
she was at him for abusing himself so shamefully.
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